The IALA VTS council RECOMMENDS that National Members and other appropriate Authorities and Entities, introducing an IVEF Service into their shore infrastructure, take into account the principles as set out in the Guidelines on the Inter-VTS Exchange Format (IVEF) Service.

The IVEF SDK uses a number of components: the definition, the toolkit and the library itself. Until now we have been supporting two flavors of the library, namely the 0.1 and the 0.2 branches. With the upcoming release of the IVEF document, we want to restructure the SDK and basically it will mean the release of one single SDK that holds all the components.

This version will probably be called 0.3 and the older versions will be moved under the respective branches and tags.

A Tag is a label used to identify a version of a component of set of component that have achieved a certain state.

The working version of the software is stored in the “trunk” which is in an undefined state.

The new IVEF release is now available to the open source community. IVEF is a cross-platform message exchange framework for VTS data exchange. IVEF is available for customer use, evaluation and open source download.

The trunk of the IVEF SDK now supports PHP as programming language. With the same ease as in the other languages, you can now create a PHP environment that supports IVEF.

PHP is particularly useful when using a REST protocol over HTTP to integrate the IVEF traffic image in a SOA architecture.

e.g. reading an IVEF traffic image from file can be done in just a few lines:

// get the data

$input = file_get_contents(“php://stdin”);

// parse it

$parser = new Parser();

$result = $parser->parseXMLMessage($input);

And creating an IVEF message is quite simple too:

$MSG_IVEF->toXML();

PHP adds a powerful language to the software development kit, which allows rapid development and high level exchange of the traffic image.

Important limitations

There are two main differences between the PHP version and the Qt/Java/Objc version of the library:

*The PHP version of the library makes no effort to compensate for compatibility due to errors in previous versions (e.g. Qt/Java/Objc versions can handle illegal timestamps that could originate from previous versions of the same library)

*The PHP version of the library handles only complete XML messages and not partial messages as the Qt/Java/Objc versions do. This is because PHP by definition is a stateless protocol and not a streaming protocol. It is highly unlikely that XML messages will arrive at the PHP parser in snippets.

As a general-purpose programming language, PHP code is processed by an interpreter application in command-line mode performing desired operating system operations and producing program output on its standard output channel. It may also function as a graphical application. PHP is available as a processor for most modern web servers and as standalone interpreter on mostoperating systems andcomputing platforms.

The new IVEF release is now available to the open source community. IVEF is a cross-platform message exchange framework for VTS data exchange. IVEF is available for customer use, evaluation and open source download.

The new IVEF release is now available to the open source community. IVEF is a cross-platform message exchange framework for VTS data exchange. IVEF is available for customer use, evaluation and open source download.

The new IVEF release is now available to the open source community. IVEF is a cross-platform message exchange framework for VTS data exchange. IVEF is available for customer use, evaluation and open source download.

The new IVEF release is now available to the open source community. IVEF is a cross-platform message exchange framework for VTS data exchange. IVEF is available for customer use, evaluation and open source download.

When it comes to VTS information exchange and standardization, IALA AISM is the most logical forum that springs to mind. During the IALA conference in Cape Town 2010 you can find many of the IVEF members, which are available for questions and remark.

Be sure to pick up the Flyer, which explains the purpose and place of IVEF in the eNav architecture. It also shows the members and tells you how to get further references.

International Association of Marine Aids to Navigation and Lighthouse Authorities

IALA is a non profit, non governmental international technical association. Established in 1957, it gathers marine aids to navigation authorities, manufacturers and consultants from all parts of the world and offers them the opportunity to compare their experiences and achievements. IALA’s aim is to harmonize aids to navigation worldwide and to ensure that the movements of vessels are safe, expeditious, cost effective and harmless to the environment.